The "tea party" movement

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Hartford tea party draws 3000; Instapundit thinks that would worry Chris Dodd - 4/15/2009

... the Grand Strategist for the tea parties was a huge mistake. There are about 1 million people in the general Hartford area and 3.5 million people in the state. Meaning that the attendance at the party was 0.3% of the population of the MSA and less than 0.1% of those in the state. In 2004, he got almost 1 million votes; the 3000 is 0.3% of that. His GOP opponent got half a million votes; the 3,000...

Ed Morrissey makes reasonable albeit unrealistic case for tea parties - 4/15/2009

... definitely not the one that the tea parties are projecting to the world. Rather, their objection is to taxes in general, and in many or most cases not out of ideology but simply out of extreme self-centeredness. Many leftie useful idiots actually want what's best for the U.S., even if what they support would actually be counter-productive. Many or most of those at the "parties" hav...

Tax Day Tea Party open thread: turnout numbers, pictures, sanity... (UPDATE: "They wanted to be like Code Pink") - 4/15/2009

The Tax Day Tea Parties are finally here! All across the U.S., a sub-miniscule fraction of the U.S. population will be standing on street corners holding signs that will make them look bad and ultimately help Barack Obama by giving the false impression that his opposition is "mean-spirited" and weak in numbers. Pictures and turn-out numbers will follow as this momentous (for them) day pr...

Tea parties have arrived! Paul Krugman does hit piece on them. - 4/13/2009

... York Times might have done the tea parties a great big favor by giving them a great big pinata to whack at: the fact that Krugman tries to do a hit piece on them (link). Shortly after engaging in ad hominems and losing his train of thought for a few paragraphs, he says this: ...it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (f...

HuffPost, The Atlantic, LGF, Gawker, Sullivan, C&L, & more spread smear video (Glenn Beck, "burn the books") - 4/12/2009

The attached video is a local meetup for Glenn Beck's "912 Project" and features someone who's probably genuine giving an anti-Communism and partly paranoid rant. However, near the five minute mark, a lady's voice is heard shouting out "burn the books". She's then challenged by a male attendee who asks her whether she's serious; she replies that yes she...

Honk three times if you're on the road to Idiocracy: bombastic Bob Basso gives final tea party talk - 4/11/2009

... you'd expect, and it pushes the tea parties even further down the road to Idiocracy. Previous sign posts on that road have included mailing tea bags to politicians. The current sign post Basso is aiming for is for people to honk their horns three times at noon on April 15. No, I'm not kidding. For all his bombastic dire warnings about things that (presumably) Obama is going to do, Basso...

Tea party schism? Will powerful backers try to push amnesty despite wishes of base? - 4/09/2009

... Kochtopus are all involved in the tea parties in one way or another. And, all of them support massive immigration and would probably support new amnesty plans. (For past support, see Norquist and Armey). How exactly would that work out? Would those tea party backers try to convince the tea party base - which presumably is strongly opposed to amnesty - to give in? Would they play fun games, such a...

Instapundit chats with tea party "facilitator" from Koch-linked group - 4/08/2009

... on the "grassroots" tea parties: PJTV: I talk with PubliusPundit - and Tucson Tea Party organizer - Robert Mayer, and with Tea Party facilitators Matt Kibbe of Freedomworks and Chris Bond of Americans for Prosperity about tea parties and where they should go next. Click their name's link for more on the AFP; at least as of November of last year the chairman of their foundation'...

ACORN denies knowledge of "tea parties". Ergo, they must be planning to sabotage them - 4/08/2009

... infiltrating and sabotaging the tea parties. This rumor has now spread to Neil Cavuto on Fox News; they might have actual sources, or they might have just been relying on the original unsubstantiated claim. Over to Adam Serwer at TAPPED (link): I called up ACORN Executive Director Steve Kest and asked him about it. "I saw some mention of this on a blog, I have no idea even what the tea parti...

ACORN doesn't need to sabotage the tea parties, they're doing a bang-up job on their own - 4/06/2009

... the last 300 organizers of the tea parties - is that ACORN is trying to sabotage the "parties" [1]. There's certainly the possibility that they might be doing that, but they don't need to for at least a couple reasons: 1. The partiers are already doing a great job marginalizing and discrediting themselves on their own, and 2. The "parties" are a great way to keep Oba...

Winner! Tea party in deep blue district draws 300 where Dem Rep. got 103,033 votes; 0.2% of all those who voted - 4/04/2009

If there's one thing the tea parties have taught us, it's that Glenn Reynolds is not a math professor. The "parties" are using a technique - street protests - that rely on sheer numbers. Yet, the numbers just aren't there: there are only so many "kulaks" [1] in the general population. Instead of working smarter and asking politicians tough questions on video, the...

Is Erick Erickson of RedState promoting revolution, violence against politicians? - 4/01/2009

... outlines is indeed where the tea parties and other completely ineffective populist movements are leading, and it looks to me like Erickson is promoting mob action. What Erickson isn't promoting is a much more effective plan that would help reform politics and that would be completely legal and non-violent: asking politicians tough questions on video. Coming up with ideas like that and promot...

The stupidity of the tea parties rolls on, at much reduced rate - 3/30/2009

1. Over the weekend, there were apparently just three "parties": Buffalo; Stamford, Connecticut; and Essex County, Massachusetts. 2. The aftermath of the one in Essex County is promoted by Glenn Reynolds at pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/75093 and pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/75109. About a hundred people showed up. The Congressman for that area appears to be John Tierney, a Democrat. In 2...

Pictures from today's massive tea party protest - 3/28/2009

The picture from today's massive protest is attached. On a more serious note, Glenn Reynolds keeps pushing the protests, despite having little to work with. At post time, there are just two events on his page: a small one in Stamford, and a slightly larger one in Buffalo that drew a few hundred people. The picture from Matt Margolis - formerly of Blogs for Bush - here is worth a look. The sig...

Three more signs the "tea parties" are a poorly-planned and pointless waste of time - 3/23/2009

... the lack of coverage that the tea parties are receiving. They have received some coverage, but mostly of the local variety (Orlando here). If the "parties" were in any way a threat to the political establishment, the MSM would be currently engaged in a seek and destroy mission similiar to what they did with Sarah Palin. Obviously, no one with any power is concerned about the "parti...

Instapundit now promoting loony protests but still refusing to just go Galt - 3/21/2009

Way back in December 2002, I went to the first of several "peace" protests in order to take pictures of the wacky signs and such. I ended up getting a few "Instalanches" (links from Instapundit) out of it, and Andrew Sullivan even linked to one of them. Plus ca change, as Sully is now an Obama supporter and so on. And, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit is now linking to (pajamasmed...

Sen. Mitch McConnell now promoting Randroid "tea parties"? - 3/18/2009

... video of news reports about the tea parties is from the Youtube user SRCC07, someone who doesn't give any indication to who they might be on their profile (youtube.com/user/SRCC07). However, oddly enough, most of their videos appear to be things like statements from U.S. Senators, mostly Mitch McConnell. And, there's a Senate Republican Communications Center (SRCC). If they were trying ...

Constituent threatened over tea bag sent through mail? (Congressman John Adler) - 3/13/2009

... It's just a stunt. The "tea parties" are just a stunt. Asking politicians stupid questions about hypocrisy is just a stunt. There are enough stupid stunts on all the reality shows on TV and all the political food fight shows on cable TV. What we need is for politicians to be asked tough questions about their policies to their face on video. That's 100% defensible and if peo...

Is any politician worried about the "tea parties"? (Rep. Sam Farr, Carmel/Monterey) - 3/08/2009

... "tea party protest and "tea parties" protest. The most-watched video in the second search has less than 2000 views. The most-watched video in the first search has almost a million views, but that's simply Rick Santelli's original rant. After that it gets a lot - a lot - worse. The second is an unrelated sitcom. Then, a derivative of the Santelli rant advertising reteapart...

"Fullerton Tea Party" was not a "tea party", don't be fooled - 3/08/2009

... wasn't one of the classic tea parties in the Ayn Rand/"taxation is theft"/"greed is good" sense. Instead, it was based on something that John and Ken had been pushing before the "tea parties" started and it was mostly a protest of local California issues relating to Arnold Schwarzenegger. They glommed on to the "tea party" idea and did feature some dis...

"Tea Parties": an astroturfed Koch family movement (FreedomWorks, Instapundit, Rick Santelli) - 2/28/2009

... in addition to promoting the tea parties Reynolds recently promoted a Koch internship. UPDATE 3: There are a few links about this here, including to Santelli denying any links and to a few articles from Megan McArdle. While the authors did get some things wrong, those like Glenn Reynolds who try to imply that everything was wrong aren't telling the truth. For instance, the Sam Adams Allian...

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